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4.1 Probing Arterial Stiffness at the Nano-Scale using the Internal Mammary Artery as a Novel Target
Artery Research volume 24, page 75 (2018)
Abstract
Introduction
Arterial stiffening is associated with structural and biomechanical alterations in the aorta. However, there are still gaps in our understanding as to how the structure and properties of arteries across the vasculature are altered with high PWV.Objective: To determine whether altered ultrastructural and nanomechanical properties are exhibited in the internal mammary artery (IMA) in high PWV patients.
Methods
Human IMA biopsies were obtained from patients with known carotid-femoral PWV. Patients were grouped as low PWV (8.5 ± 0.7 ms−1, n = 8) and high PWV (13.4 ± 3.0 ms−1, n = 9). With Peakforce QNM atomic force microscopy (AFM) the nanomechanical (elastic modulus) and morphological properties (collagen fibril diameter and D-Period) of the IMA were measured. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to determine the relationship of nanomechanical and structural data with proteomics data (small leucine rich proteoglycans, SLRPs) [1] and patient metadata.
Results
PCA analysis shows that the nano-scale elastic modulus was one of the key variables which separated low and high PWV groups and was correlated with PWV. Furthermore, nano-scale alterations in adventitial collagen fibrils were evident. D-Period and collagen fibril diameter were found to be negatively correlated. Most SLRPs were closely grouped in the PCA analysis.
Conclusions
Although the IMA is not involved in the carotid-femoral pathway, patients with high PWV exhibited distinct alterations in the IMA at the nano-scale relative to those with low PWV. Our approach provides new insight into systemic structure-property changes in the vasculature, and also provides a novel method for characterizing small biopsy samples for arterial stiffening studies.
References
Hansen ML, Beck HC, Irmukhamedov A, Jensen PS, Olsen MH, Rasmussen LM. Proteome analysis of human arterial tissue discloses associations between the vascular content of small leucine-rich repeat proteoglycans and pulse wave velocity. 2015 Arterioscl. Thrombosis Vasc. Biol. 35:1896–1903.
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This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
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Akhtar, R., Chang, Z., Hansen, M.L. et al. 4.1 Probing Arterial Stiffness at the Nano-Scale using the Internal Mammary Artery as a Novel Target. Artery Res 24, 75 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artres.2018.10.040
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artres.2018.10.040